Correlating proof of play to point of sale data is specifically useful for tracking the effectiveness of a particular ad creative vs. alternative versions which allows you to split test certain content strategies versus others. I believe this tool will allow digital signage as a medium to accelerate its maturation since we will have direct scientific results to our experiments.
All this being said, you do not need to correlate proof of play data to point of sales data to calculate direct ROI. Vendors are already calculating ROI for their static in-store advertising spend. In this case, proof of play logs are simply used as a proof of ad delivery, e.g. in the case of a campaign performance report.
Longer term, I anticipate seeing many different technologies that will analyze raw proof of play logs to measure different dimensions of effectiveness. Here are a few examples:
1- To look at the behavior of a particular system or group of systems due to help troubleshoot a complaint .
2- Verify the veracity of the campaign performance report by comparing it to the raw data
3- An automatic playlog auditing system by tying on-site auditor logs of what was displayed to the playlogs reported by the player.
As a side note, nobody wants to pay for ad plays that have not been displayed on the screen, In order to comply with item (3), proof of play logs must actually be proof of display logs. In other words, each playlog entry must also take into account if the display was showing the ad.
4.
Firedrake | September 26th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Very interesting insight, Daniel. I think you just opened Pandora’s box, because there are so many different things meant by different people when they say ‘correlating proof of play with POS.’ As for tracking the direct ROI from campaigns, true, you can just divide the sales uplift amounts by the ad spend and get that ROI number bypassing the proof of play data. But what if there was no or low sales uplift and the advertiser wants to know if their ad was played at all, and if it did, whether it was played according to the campaign plan? Or, if equal ad budgets were spent in two similar stores on the same copy but the sales uplift is very different? Of course other factors should be considered, such as ‘out of stock’ or wrong ad copy version, etc., but I still think the proof of play data is a valuable component of ROI measurement in retail digital signage. It just gives so much more rich info for analysis. My point is that, apart from measuring the effectiveness of each ad copy version, correlating proof of play with the sales uplift also allows you to see ‘what I did right’ (or wrong) in terms of scheduling: was the day part picked right, saturation (plays per loop), etc., so you can tweak those parameters too, if needed.
I do have to speak up on the aggregation front though. ADCENTRICITY (disclaimer: my company) currently has over 7,000 screens in Canada under one roof through working with our partners and will be 10,000 by the end of this year. The screens are broken into 14 categories and 52 sub-categories of placement/venue types. You can buy via demographic, geography or venue type (e.g. all pharmacies) or a combination of all of the above. Our MO is basically “1 Plan, 1 Buy, 1 Bill”. Ultimately, we’ve been working very hard with Networks and Media Agencies to remove the “points of pain” in the buying process to make buying more transparent and raise the understanding of what media buyers get for their dollar. Response has been very positive from the buyers and Brands.
Ian’s right. You do have to keep very tight control of the quality of the offerings and understand what are A, B and C property types. We’ve been forced to eject Network partners from our platform and program because their implementations are just not high enough quality.
- what exactly are the “points of pain†in the buying process that media buyers are complaining about?
- what do you sell your ad space by: CPM, projected number of ad plays? Is there such thing as ‘underdelivery’ or ‘overdelivery’ on a campaign in your practice?
There are 6 key points of pain that every buyer has to deal with. If any of these “points of pain” exists, it automatically gives them a reason to say no…and they will say no if they can because it means less work for them .
1.) Planning
The ability to actually buy on a consumer profile instead of a network profile and only pay for what you want. E.g. most buyers buy for a campaign which has a particular objective. E.g. I want to reach males, 18-34 in these 10 DMAs on these 27 FSAs (areas determined by postal code). The “Planning” pain also includes reach and scale. If you can’t provide them with enough audience in enough places, it’s just a waste of their time. e.g. 20 venues x 100 ppl per venue per day x 30 days = is a gross audience of 60,000, of which only 30% might fit your target market for a campaign. at a $5 CPM, that’s $300. It’s just too small to matter when they’re buying 1 full page media spot in the newspaper for $30,000 that has a gross reach of 1.2 million for 1 day. remember that the media companies make a % of the media. If they get 15%, that’s $45 for a buy that takes them more time than buying traditional media
2.) Buying
As alluded to by Ian, if you make a buy across 40 networks individually, negotiating 40 deals is too time consuming and drawn out for them to bother. It’s also quite frustrating to the buyers who end up, as you say above, having to deal with sales people who aren’t media professionals. They just don’t speak the same language or have an understanding of what the buyer really wants to accomplish. We’ve actually consolidated all of that in our platform and I can have a full vetted blended vanilla quote back to a buyer in 24 hours on unlimited Networks.
3.) Creative
4.) Distribution and flight guarantees.
5.) Reporting
6.) Billing
Our platform and service has been built to accommodate all of these areas.
That’s the basic topics. I could go a lot further into this but it would take up a few pages That’s a surface view. 20 locations are still valuable though! If I’ve got 20 Networks of 20 locations a piece, I can sell that because it roles up into 1,200,00 people a month and starts to become relevant (although still small)
On what we sell on, I’ll say “everything”. We don’t do a rate card approach because every campaign is different and the selected venues change all the time based on their relevance to a buy and each brand/buyer may evaluate on a different $ metric. So when our system generates a quote, it spits out about 7 different realtive costs…they’re all based on the same thing really. That way a buyer can just look at the number they want.
Never underdeliver. Buyers don’t want to (and shouldn’t have to) pay for media you promised but didn’t deliver…and it always happens..someone unplugs a machine, etc.. So when you’re budgetting, always budget over on the # of spots you deliver. You won’t get paid for them, but you’ll have a happier customer and won’t get into squabbles when pay day comes around.
Rob, that’s great feedback from the field. I can see that you are struggling with the same issues as our client networks do: non-standardized ad space, especially when it comes to selling by consumer profiles and the question of what to put your price tag on. It’s true that it takes a media buyer a few minutes to make a TV buy and pocket a commission, so why bother explore digital signage for little or no reward? And I don’t blame them too much, because it’s supposed to be up to the seller to make the buying job easier. But we see that changing as advertisers are increasing pressure on media buyers to give them more new media versus traditional, and several trade organizations are working hard to establish standards and measurements for digital signage. We are also working on a couple of things that would make it easier for networks to sell. Meanwhile, I think it’s inspiring that even given all those challenges you are managing to grow your business. Aggregated, standardized and packaged digital signage space is definitely the future of this medium.
Thank you for your comment. For Canadian market stats I would suggest trying The Canadian Out-of-Home Digital Association (CODA): http://www.the-cdsa.org/index.php .
Let me know if you could find what you needed there.
Cheers,
13.
lars | October 8th, 2007 at 10:33 am
London Underground originally approved an infrared sensor placed in the tunnel to trigger the projector to stop displaying as a train entered the station. Another senor would be activated as the train left the station to turn it on again. The projector actually displays black rather than turning off.
DPI provide the projector technology to display bright HD images onto curved surfaces, with Telentice the back-end booking, delivery and playout system.
It will be interesting to see how passengers will react to CBS plans to only show advertising.
BroadSign Bloggers: Since there are several media math formulas currently being used to calculate digital signage media buys, I truly wonder which formulas are really apples-to-apples. Can you charge a national advertiser a flat ad-spot rate/per month/per location across 500, 1000, 2000+ locations? As a network grows do advertisers hesitate to pay more based on network growth. What about niche audiences for example women-only, Hispanics, African American networks, do they garner higher rates based on tighter targeting.
16.
Andrey Kazakov | October 11th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Is there some special license that needs to be obtained to operate Plasma screen network in Canada (and particulary in BC)? I intersted in contacts with small scaled Digital Signage network operators in British Columbia
Cheers,
Andrey
17.
Ian Dobson | October 12th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Very valid response and comments Rob. Love your presentation of the “Points of Pain”. Everybody selling media should clearly understand these and respect them.
Let’s not forget that digital signage is still in the non-traditional category in the media industry. Whatever is left after the traditional buys are made is all that’s available for not just digital networks but a slew of other mediums in the same category. In this case, it’s usually about your environment. Where you are and who you reach. If the client wants your environment, you have a chance. if they don’t, you’re out of luck.
Let’s not forget about another reason tv gets so much of the revenue for agencies. Production! Producing tv spots is very expensive…huge amounts of money that the agency collects a % on. They also get a % on every buy. This amounts to big revenues. The costs of producing radio spots, digital, print ads and others is minimal meaning less revenue for the agency. It’s simply the nature of the beast.
Here is the answer to your question from Jeff Dickey, Founder/VP Business Development, SeeSaw Networks:
“While standards have yet to be agreed upon, one emerging currency for digital signage buys is CPM, where the impressions are determined using the combination of a validated traffic number multiplied by an awareness
number. This formula truly brings an apples-to-apples comparison to digital out-of-home media buys that span multiple digital out of home networks.
National advertisers are reluctant to buy on flat rates simply because not all locations are equal, even within the same network (different demos, different traffic, etc.). Some networks have gotten away with requiring nationwide/network-wide buys, but those days are numbered as the advertisers push toward more specific buys with greater and greater levels of targeting.
If the research is available to support the demographics of female, Hispanic, or age groups — even better if the demographic data can be day-parted — a premium can definitely be applied to the better opportunities the advertiser has to reach their target audience.”
Jeff Dickey, Founder/VP Business Development, SeeSaw Networks
Rob Gorrie of ADCENTRICITY provided this answer to the above question by Darin Gilstrap by emai. I am posting it here on Rob’s behalf:
RG: Love this question – right in line with the type of mature answer
buyers need. Here’s the long answers:
Media formulae – there’s no one size fits all…and that’s part of the secret…our medium is NOT a commodity, nor is it a “rate cardâ€. A bunch of Omnicom clients (execs) I deal with relate this space to TV/Broadcast and feel it’s a trailer buy to a TV spend, which is measured against a quasi GRP. On the other hand, some of the guys I deal with in the WPP camp throw it in to outdoor, as a subset, which is measured on……..something (perceived passerby traffic)…
Others think it’s a subcomponent of online digital advertising, especially with the rise of online video.
One of my advisors probably had the best comment when he said: “your medium is everything BUT TV. It has the dynamic nature of the Internet, the recency/FMOT of point of purchase, the localism of newspaper, the frequency of outdoor, the POTENTIAL relevance of magazines, the qualitative measurement capability of none of them with none of the problems of TVâ€â€¦.FYI, he was one of the instrumental characters in launching a large number of specialty channels on TV. This, of course, brings us to our industry identity crisis problem..if we’re something of every medium, but none of them at the same time, what are we? (this is another discussion and part of why media buyers have such a hard time understanding what we are/can provide – and we don’t explain it well).
End of the day, everything in our space can be boiled back down to 2 baseline common denominators:
1.) CPM Audience (cost per thousand “impressions†on gross audience)
which is a 30+ year old metric. Regardless of how old or irrelevant
this number is, it’s STILL the baseline for COST comparison across media
- TV = $17-$27/CPM on survivor (40 million gross on monthly =
$500K+/spot). Magazine = $15 CPM on readership of 10 mil’ish. Digital
Signage = $5/CPM at C-Store….makes it easy to compare COST but not ROI
or performance or impact.
2.) CPM Ads Served (Cost per thousand ads served) – New School
Internet ratings. Works as an ROI comparative but means little on media
evaluation/effectiveness. Great for quantitative analysis on media
impact or “pseudo-efficiency†on spend. Using the above mentality; TV =
$500,000,000/thousand (1 ad = $500K), Magazine = $50,000,000/’000 (1 ad
= $50K). Digital Signage $50/’000 (1 ad = 0.05) – we’ve run campaigns
that serve 5 million ads in 4 weeks for very little…it gets a little
silly.
EVERY other metric can be boiled down to one of these two. What we should be striving for is a pseudo comparative metric close to GRP, which every other traditional, measured medium tries to emulate. This will take a couple of years and, quite frankly, can’t be accomplished by 1 network on its own or one category of network (e.g. just pharmacies) -
it’s completely dependant on the needs of the campaign.
Once you know this, you can reverse engineer everything else. We don’t really care what people need to evaluate on so we provide them everything….down to cost per ad served per gross audience reached. It’s a little overboard, but it means a buyer can evaluate a $ figure immediately based on what they need to evaluate it on to prove a good
buy to their client.
So what does that mean to your network, taking learning from above? As I’ve said before, Media buyers care about 3 things; Efficiency, Effectiveness and Reach. I won’t go into all of them but the big one is TARGETED reach.
So to the questions:
“Can you charge a national advertiser a flat ad-spot rate/per month/per
location?â€
Yes.
It boils down to CPM Viewers, whether you like it or not. Let’s take $200/venue/month/spot. And let’s pretend we’re talking about a Convenience store chain that sees 2000 ppl per day/venue on average. (60,000 gross audience per month/venue). If you’re charging the above $200/venue, you’ve effectively saying to the advertiser that your media is worth $3.33/’000. Now let’s say that you’ve got 500 Convenience stores on that average (30,000,000 gross audience). You’re still charging $3.33 at $200 a month per spot at 500 locations.
Realistically, 30,000,000 is worth a hell of a lot more than 60,000, especially if you want to start competing with the measured mediums, but Digital Signage isn’t mature enough as a holistic base to command that yet, nor do buyers trust it as a viable mass alternative or placeholder.
What’s more valuable?…a single, 1 day, $30,000 full page ad in the financial section of a newspaper that has a full paper “readership†of 1.2 million or a $60,000 Digital signage spend that serves 800,000 ads in 2 weeks in urban financial targets on various networks with a gross audience of 4,000,000 (targeted/net audience of 740,000)?
Give it 2 years and price inflation will occur naturally based on demand and finite inventory. Now, to top this off, you have to remember that the real value is in the actual TARGETED reach that an advertiser can get through the access achieved with your network. You should always really be selling on audience access as opposed to venues because that’s all a buyer really cares about…the more targeted your network is to their needs, the more likely they are to buy on it.
Where the REAL power comes in is with frequency. How many times can we make that audience on average see that ad without media fatigue? Does your audience come to your venue once a day or once a month? It’s a bit of a science and it gets really complex when you decide to merge 10 different categories together in one campaign (C-Stores, pharmacies, grocery, bar, etc).
Q: “As a network grows do advertisers hesitate to pay more based on network
growth?â€
No. actually, agencies and brands WANT more growth. 500 locations means nothing to them in the grand scheme of things. They can moan as much as they want (and trust me they will) but if you follow the above and your demo is what they want, you end up holding the cards. As above, if 30% of those 30 million gross audience are EXACTLY who they need to reach, you’re in the driver’s seat. Don’t fall for the “I reach X on TVâ€
argument either…realistically, if you know the stats, less than 46% of people even stay in the room (or change channel or start chatting or look at their laptop) during a TV commercial and of those 46%, the recall is 21% versus a 35%+ recall on Digital Signage.
In addition, TV’s “ad acceptance rating†is very low whereas I have studies that show acceptance on Digital Signage up to 60%. And of that TV audience, that’s GROSS…not really even targeted based on the GRPs they’re buying. End of the day, each brand only has so much dough, however….you need to make sure your content is relevant and up to date, otherwise the impact of your ads is zero because there’s nothing for the audience to look at or be entertained by.
Lastly, the media agencies aren’t buying because of scale. If they’re making 15% on this and you’re trying to sell them a 50K program, they make $7500 for a ton more effort than buying a newspaper spot (which is a phone call away). The media agencies want the networks to grow too to buy on 10,000 locations because it means the buy gets into the millions and they start making some real money based on their efforts. As hard as they push you down on price, the harder they push the less they make for their efforts (we sell on gross not net).
Q:â€What about niche audiences for example women-only, Hispanics, African American networks, do they garner higher rates based on tighter targetingâ€
RG: This is my favorite question. Yes and No is the best answer I can give, however. North American brands and media companies are disasters when it comes to targeting minorities or economic subsets. There’s been some great articles on ad age about this recently. They (we) aren’t very good at understanding how to effectively speak a different language other than “BRANDâ€. And a brand means something different to each targeted group. We’re learning, slowly, as the population changes and there are certain brands and agencies that have learned to capitalize on this trend.
Reality is, however, that you have to be smart about your sales efforts on this question. Despite the fact that they’ll deny it left, right and center, “Coke’s†media company will not see value in paying more for your “targeted†network of 500 locations versus someone else’s based on profiling of that nature. They’re VERY smart statisticians and very good at what they do, but it’s too small to be on their radar to have impact if they decide to target a particular group.
On the other hand, there are other brands who are second tier who LOVE the ability to get to this level, based on their product, service or campaign that no one pays attention to but are so perfect for Digital Signage (e.g. a inner city doctor’s network).
They also will realize more out of advertising with you than “Coke†will so…. Longer term, you can charge them more and, if you get enough of them, you get to turn down the “Coke’s†of the world on cheaper pricing, as attractive as they are, because your network is more effective for others and you don’t have to cater to their needs….the “A†list clients aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. The old saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder†still holds true. If you have a niche that is attractive to a particular advertiser, they’ll chase you if you can prove value and effective returns.
The following question was posted by Darin Gilstrap:
“BroadSign Bloggers: Since there are several media math formulas currently being used to calculate digital signage media buys, I truly wonder which formulas are really apples-to-apples. Can you charge a national advertiser a flat ad-spot rate/per month/per location across 500, 1000, 2000+ locations? As a network grows do advertisers hesitate to pay more based on network growth? What about niche audiences for example women-only, Hispanics, African American networks, do they garner higher rates based on tighter targeting.â€
Here is the expert answer from Jeff Dickey, Founder/VP Business Development, SeeSaw Networks (sent by email):
“While standards have yet to be agreed upon, one emerging currency for digital signage buys is CPM, where the impressions are determined using the combination of a validated traffic number multiplied by an awareness number. This formula truly brings an apples-to-apples comparison to digital out-of-home media buys that span multiple digital out of home networks.
National advertisers are reluctant to buy on flat rates simply because not all locations are equal, even within the same network (different demos, different traffic, etc.). Some networks have gotten away with requiring nationwide/network-wide buys, but those days are numbered as the advertisers push toward more specific buys with greater and greater levels of targeting.
If the research is available to support the demographics of female, Hispanic, or age groups — even better if the demographic data can be day-parted — a premium can definitely be applied to the better opportunities the advertiser has to reach their target audience.â€
Jeff Dickey, Founder/VP Business Development, SeeSaw Networks
[...] continuation of the earlier discussion on how to sell your ad space, we received an answer to the following question posted by Darin Gilstrap: “BroadSign Bloggers: [...]
This is an excellent point. CAP is definitely the direction that network operators need to be heading in as opposed to an “emergency push” approach. However, certain challenges remain before large scale implementation can begin.
1) Availability. As of this writing, there are remarkably few publically accessible CAP feeds. As time goes by, more and more governments and companies should gravitate towards the standard.
2) Scalability. By their very nature, emergency messaging systems are vulnerable to the Slashdot Effect because as soon as a message is posted, all recipients require it immediately. This can place a high load on the CAP server and stress its available burst bandwidth. Any reduction in QoS will introduce delays that diminish the value of the message. An alternative would be to push out the message via satellite multicast, however, usually multicast providers allow you only a certain window of time each day. If your emergency does not fall within your provider’s multicast window, it will be irrelevant by the time it is delivered.
3) Security. Network operators typically want emergency messages to preempt the regular schedule and/or preempt the entire display by going fullscreen. That requirement makes it a very dangerous feature because it introduces a means to easily hijack a digital sign. This is compounded by the fact that CAP is typically disseminated over regular HTTP which is vulnerable to all kinds of man-in-the-middle and DNS-based attacks. Using HTTPS and enforcing verification of the server’s certificate on the client side would go a long way to mitigate this risk, however, CAP providers really aren’t thinking about security yet, they seem to be more in the proof-of-concept phase.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
28.
Tom Muniz | October 20th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Dan – spot on commentary!
The future of critical mass digital signage is intrinsically tied to advertising that is contextual and matched to the behavior of the consumer – and the kicker….accurately measurable to the connected consumer who is moving from platform to platform (TV to the PC..leaving the house with cell phone in hand and frequenting the 4th screen, digital signage OOH environments).
As an industry, we must set the standards – now – for Ad Serving and Ad Measurement with universal agreement to opening up all competing digital signage players and backends with the requisite SDKs/APIs and creating data compatible XML widgets to access the ad servers. If we don’t – Cisco, Google or Microsoft most certainly will.
31.
Nurlan Urazbaev | October 22nd, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Phil,
As the company itself describes it: WPP is one of the world’s largest communications services groups, employing 100,000 people* working in over 2,000 offices in 106 countries.
A world leader in marketing communications.
WPP companies exist to help their clients compete successfully: in marketing strategy, advertising, every form of marketing communication and in monitoring progress.
[...] more here This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 1:05 pm and is filed under advertising [...]
35.
Daniel Parisien | October 26th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Hi Kike,
Monitoring is a vital component to running a digital signage network. When something happens on your network that can compromise your advertising revenue, you will want to react as quickly as possible to (1) identify exactly what is happening and (2) immediately respond to return to an operational state.
BroadSign Suite was specifically built with the monitoring and reporting tools you need to perform this. When an issue is reported, you can setup the system to immediately send you an email, for example.
[...] Jackson West wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptSome 63% of those who have seen digital signage say it attracted their attention, compared with 58% for billboards, 57% for magazines, 56% for TV, 47% for internet, 40% for newspaper, 37% for radio and 10% for mobile. … [...]
[...] Nurlan Urazbaev added an interesting post today on Digital Signage Ads Are Tolerated better Than Other Media: OTX Study.Here’s a small reading:Most adults say advertising on digital signage catches their attention – and they consider such advertising unique and entertaining, and less annoying than both traditional and online media, according to a study by OTX (Online Testing … [...]
Daniel – great topic. We, at SeeSaw, whole-heartedly agree with the industry moving toward much greater accountability. It is refreshing to see your position that proof-of-play goes beyond logs of a playback device and needs to focus on playback at the screen level.
While we generally agree with your four components of an accountable digital signage reporting solution, we would respectfully add two additional factors: traffic and awareness. Traffic is represented the foot traffic passing by a specific location (the potential viewers) and awareness represents the percentage of people that are aware that a digital signage device is in place, displaying content. Everything in the system can operate perfectly, playback on the device is logged correctly, screens are on and displaying ads correctly – but without foot-traffic and awareness, there is no measurement of how many people actually SAW an ad.
By adding these two data components, the advertiser now has a more complete picture of their digital signage campaign’s performance. As Tom mentions, it’s imperative that standards be put forth by those looking to lead this industry.
44.
Nurlan Urazbaev | November 2nd, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I think Ken brings up a highly valid point: in order to get reliable impressions numbers, you need to measure the audience and match that data with the proof of play (rather, proof of display, as per Daniel’s definition).
The problem is, in the real world, a lot of networks have neither accurate proof of display stats, nor regularly updated audience measurements. The audience surveys are very expensive and are usually done only once in a few months or once a year at best. So, the accountability becomes fuzzy.
This could be resolved first of all by improving the proof of display reporting process, and, secondly, by implementing digital monitoring of viewership.
Digital cameras that capture every instance of a customer looking at a sign, the duration of eye contact, often even the age, gender and ethnicity of a viewer are already available on the market. The monitoring is real- or near-real time, and various types of reports can be generated based on that data. This new technology allows to deliver the ad impressions numbers as “hard” data, as opposed to the “soft” data, when only a sample of audience is polled by way of traditional exit interviews and then the results are extrapolated to the whole “universe”.
Such proof of performance can be sufficient to analyze the effectiveness of media spending in a non-retail environment. In retail, however, the ultimate goal is sales lift (see the previous post on the topic), so the campaign performance picture would be completed if sales conversion data is added to the two previous tiers, i.e., proof of display and audience measurements.
Earlier this year I have proposed draft definitions of “the three tiers of accountability” for in-store digital signage:
Tier I:
Proof of ad delivery: How many times was my ad displayed on the targeted screens, in what markets, locations, sites, and over which period of time? Such analysis requires robust proof-of-play reporting mechanisms. This level of accountability is used to justify billing per campaign and reconcile invoices. It also facilitates pricing your airtime, if you want to base it on the cost per ad play.
Tier II:
Proof of audience delivery: While my ads were served, how many customers had the opportunity to see them, or actually saw them? The trick here is: you cannot prove audience delivery without having accurate proof of ad delivery first.
Tier III:
Sales uplift measurement. This is the crowning achievement of advertising effectiveness analysis that has become easily available only in Internet advertising (when it is combined with e-commerce) and properly set up in-store digital signage networks. It requires correlation between ad campaign data and POS data.
[...] Ken Liao from SeeSaw Networks sent this great response to Daniel Parisien’s post “The Dirty Little Secret of Digital Signage: Proof of Play vs. Audited Proof of Display“: [...]
46.
daria | November 4th, 2007 at 6:35 am
If there was ever proof that digital signage works, here it is:
EyeClick is an innovative company that does amazing work in the field of interactive projected images. their line of products include various interactive surfaces such as: interactive walls,floors,windows and tables
they are cutting edge and creative, a company to keep an eye on! http://www.eyeclick.com
[...] Related topics: Is Digital Signage for Branding or for Sales Lift? ; New Metrics for New Media? A Multi-Billion Dollar Question ; Digital Media M&As a “High Growth Category,†Despite the Credit Crunch and Fears of Recessio… [...]
49.
Juri Hatzenbiller (KUDRYAVTSEV) | March 22nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Dear NURLAN !
Just a word of appreciation for your business and your company
I am writing in response to inform you that nowdays I live in
Germany, and my tel: 05761 – 7123.
Yours faithfully: Herr Juri Hatzenbiller
50.
Manish Kapileshwar | March 25th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I have prepared a financial statement for Digital Signage Business Model where the customer generates extra revenue by selling slots to advertisers apart from internal Branding which i would first like to verify with you & than share with others.
What is the most effective method you’ve seen for DOOH?
52.
Enrico | May 2nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I’ve just started working for a company that realize digital signage systems in Italy. I’m a project manager and soon I’ll have to manage the installation of hundreds of displays. In the meantime I’m trying to find the most valuable resources on the web to learn as much as I can, mostly to be able to address the most frequent problems before I step into them (as I surely will). This post, and this blog, looks really interesting and I’ve just bookmarked it to study it later. Thank you very much!
53.
Jeff Geng | May 5th, 2008 at 3:13 am
When I read it the first time, it seemed to be a digital signage 101 and when I read the second time, it became a 201. Great source of information for planning, executing and operating!
Ed, we definitely are on the same page when it comes to monitoring display health. Our software has gone the extra mile and actually ties campaign performance reporting with display health where ad repetitions are not counted if the display is not proven to be healthy. It also (1) notifies the network operator so they can resolve the issue as quickly as possible and (2) runs some commands to try and fix the display if this is possible.
Very interesting and insightful post. Social networking sites are still struggling to monetize their large subscriber numbers because every sites’ initial and primary goal was to gain subscribers. They figured that if you build it (large subscriber base) then the advertisers will come in truck loads. They need to ADAPT to the desires and behaviors of consumers. Facebook attempted to do this with their behavioral-targeting advertising platform with terrible results – subscribers rebelled against the open mining of their data.
Social networking sites, much like TV networks, need to involve consumers in the conversation and illustrate that they value consumers’ role in advertising.
Digital Out-of-Home is such an exciting and powerful medium becasue it exists to deliver the right message at the right time. Its flexibility and targeting power allows advertisers to craft unique messages for alternate demographic groups.
Advertising in today’s media environment of choice and consumer power works as long as you bring consumers into the conversation. Social networking sites must find a way to provide their subscribers discernable value in advertising to them.
No Comments yet
1. alex | September 22nd, 2007 at 9:49 am
hi all. nice site. by.
2. robert | September 23rd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
hi. nice blog . thanks.
3. Daniel Parisien | September 25th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Correlating proof of play to point of sale data is specifically useful for tracking the effectiveness of a particular ad creative vs. alternative versions which allows you to split test certain content strategies versus others. I believe this tool will allow digital signage as a medium to accelerate its maturation since we will have direct scientific results to our experiments.
All this being said, you do not need to correlate proof of play data to point of sales data to calculate direct ROI. Vendors are already calculating ROI for their static in-store advertising spend. In this case, proof of play logs are simply used as a proof of ad delivery, e.g. in the case of a campaign performance report.
Longer term, I anticipate seeing many different technologies that will analyze raw proof of play logs to measure different dimensions of effectiveness. Here are a few examples:
1- To look at the behavior of a particular system or group of systems due to help troubleshoot a complaint .
2- Verify the veracity of the campaign performance report by comparing it to the raw data
3- An automatic playlog auditing system by tying on-site auditor logs of what was displayed to the playlogs reported by the player.
As a side note, nobody wants to pay for ad plays that have not been displayed on the screen, In order to comply with item (3), proof of play logs must actually be proof of display logs. In other words, each playlog entry must also take into account if the display was showing the ad.
4. Firedrake | September 26th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Very interesting insight, Daniel. I think you just opened Pandora’s box, because there are so many different things meant by different people when they say ‘correlating proof of play with POS.’ As for tracking the direct ROI from campaigns, true, you can just divide the sales uplift amounts by the ad spend and get that ROI number bypassing the proof of play data. But what if there was no or low sales uplift and the advertiser wants to know if their ad was played at all, and if it did, whether it was played according to the campaign plan? Or, if equal ad budgets were spent in two similar stores on the same copy but the sales uplift is very different? Of course other factors should be considered, such as ‘out of stock’ or wrong ad copy version, etc., but I still think the proof of play data is a valuable component of ROI measurement in retail digital signage. It just gives so much more rich info for analysis. My point is that, apart from measuring the effectiveness of each ad copy version, correlating proof of play with the sales uplift also allows you to see ‘what I did right’ (or wrong) in terms of scheduling: was the day part picked right, saturation (plays per loop), etc., so you can tweak those parameters too, if needed.
5. Rob Gorrie | September 28th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Good comments Ian
I do have to speak up on the aggregation front though. ADCENTRICITY (disclaimer: my company) currently has over 7,000 screens in Canada under one roof through working with our partners and will be 10,000 by the end of this year. The screens are broken into 14 categories and 52 sub-categories of placement/venue types. You can buy via demographic, geography or venue type (e.g. all pharmacies) or a combination of all of the above. Our MO is basically “1 Plan, 1 Buy, 1 Bill”. Ultimately, we’ve been working very hard with Networks and Media Agencies to remove the “points of pain” in the buying process to make buying more transparent and raise the understanding of what media buyers get for their dollar. Response has been very positive from the buyers and Brands.
Ian’s right. You do have to keep very tight control of the quality of the offerings and understand what are A, B and C property types. We’ve been forced to eject Network partners from our platform and program because their implementations are just not high enough quality.
6. Nurlan | September 28th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Rob, thanks for your comment. I was wondering:
- what exactly are the “points of pain†in the buying process that media buyers are complaining about?
- what do you sell your ad space by: CPM, projected number of ad plays? Is there such thing as ‘underdelivery’ or ‘overdelivery’ on a campaign in your practice?
7. Rob Gorrie | September 28th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Hey Nurlan,
There are 6 key points of pain that every buyer has to deal with. If any of these “points of pain” exists, it automatically gives them a reason to say no…and they will say no if they can because it means less work for them
.
1.) Planning
The ability to actually buy on a consumer profile instead of a network profile and only pay for what you want. E.g. most buyers buy for a campaign which has a particular objective. E.g. I want to reach males, 18-34 in these 10 DMAs on these 27 FSAs (areas determined by postal code). The “Planning” pain also includes reach and scale. If you can’t provide them with enough audience in enough places, it’s just a waste of their time. e.g. 20 venues x 100 ppl per venue per day x 30 days = is a gross audience of 60,000, of which only 30% might fit your target market for a campaign. at a $5 CPM, that’s $300. It’s just too small to matter when they’re buying 1 full page media spot in the newspaper for $30,000 that has a gross reach of 1.2 million for 1 day. remember that the media companies make a % of the media. If they get 15%, that’s $45 for a buy that takes them more time than buying traditional media
2.) Buying
As alluded to by Ian, if you make a buy across 40 networks individually, negotiating 40 deals is too time consuming and drawn out for them to bother. It’s also quite frustrating to the buyers who end up, as you say above, having to deal with sales people who aren’t media professionals. They just don’t speak the same language or have an understanding of what the buyer really wants to accomplish. We’ve actually consolidated all of that in our platform and I can have a full vetted blended vanilla quote back to a buyer in 24 hours on unlimited Networks.
3.) Creative
4.) Distribution and flight guarantees.
5.) Reporting
6.) Billing
Our platform and service has been built to accommodate all of these areas.
That’s the basic topics. I could go a lot further into this but it would take up a few pages
That’s a surface view. 20 locations are still valuable though! If I’ve got 20 Networks of 20 locations a piece, I can sell that because it roles up into 1,200,00 people a month and starts to become relevant (although still small)
On what we sell on, I’ll say “everything”. We don’t do a rate card approach because every campaign is different and the selected venues change all the time based on their relevance to a buy and each brand/buyer may evaluate on a different $ metric. So when our system generates a quote, it spits out about 7 different realtive costs…they’re all based on the same thing really. That way a buyer can just look at the number they want.
Never underdeliver. Buyers don’t want to (and shouldn’t have to) pay for media you promised but didn’t deliver…and it always happens..someone unplugs a machine, etc.. So when you’re budgetting, always budget over on the # of spots you deliver. You won’t get paid for them, but you’ll have a happier customer and won’t get into squabbles when pay day comes around.
Cheers!
Rob
http://www.adcentricity.com
8. Rob Gorrie | September 28th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
By the way. Was chatting with Dave Haynes and he told me he joined your team. Congrats!
9. Nurlan | September 28th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Rob, that’s great feedback from the field. I can see that you are struggling with the same issues as our client networks do: non-standardized ad space, especially when it comes to selling by consumer profiles and the question of what to put your price tag on. It’s true that it takes a media buyer a few minutes to make a TV buy and pocket a commission, so why bother explore digital signage for little or no reward? And I don’t blame them too much, because it’s supposed to be up to the seller to make the buying job easier. But we see that changing as advertisers are increasing pressure on media buyers to give them more new media versus traditional, and several trade organizations are working hard to establish standards and measurements for digital signage. We are also working on a couple of things that would make it easier for networks to sell. Meanwhile, I think it’s inspiring that even given all those challenges you are managing to grow your business. Aggregated, standardized and packaged digital signage space is definitely the future of this medium.
And yes, I am glad Dave is now with us!
10. HD Ad projections on Tube&hellip | October 5th, 2007 at 8:30 am
[...] My colleague, Nurlan Urazbaev, dug up a litlle more on the tech side and posted in the BroadSign blog. [...]
11. Gillian | October 5th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Useful site. Anyone out there with data for the canadian maket and/or Quebec or at least able to direct me to some sources. I want to get some statistics on these two markets. Lots available for North America but not Canadao or Quebec specifically.
Thanks a lot РMerci infiniment (les r̩ponses en fran̤ais sont bien aussi !!)
12. Nurlan | October 5th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Gillian,
Thank you for your comment. For Canadian market stats I would suggest trying The Canadian Out-of-Home Digital Association (CODA): http://www.the-cdsa.org/index.php .
Let me know if you could find what you needed there.
Cheers,
13. lars | October 8th, 2007 at 10:33 am
London Underground originally approved an infrared sensor placed in the tunnel to trigger the projector to stop displaying as a train entered the station. Another senor would be activated as the train left the station to turn it on again. The projector actually displays black rather than turning off.
DPI provide the projector technology to display bright HD images onto curved surfaces, with Telentice the back-end booking, delivery and playout system.
It will be interesting to see how passengers will react to CBS plans to only show advertising.
14. Fabio Aversa | October 10th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Very interesting and very well written content! My compliments.
You are just missing the “RSS feeder” so that the readers can easily follow-up with new articles. Or maybe you have it and I couldn’t find it?
Cheers,
Fabio
15. Darin Gilstrap | October 10th, 2007 at 6:21 am
BroadSign Bloggers: Since there are several media math formulas currently being used to calculate digital signage media buys, I truly wonder which formulas are really apples-to-apples. Can you charge a national advertiser a flat ad-spot rate/per month/per location across 500, 1000, 2000+ locations? As a network grows do advertisers hesitate to pay more based on network growth. What about niche audiences for example women-only, Hispanics, African American networks, do they garner higher rates based on tighter targeting.
16. Andrey Kazakov | October 11th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Is there some special license that needs to be obtained to operate Plasma screen network in Canada (and particulary in BC)? I intersted in contacts with small scaled Digital Signage network operators in British Columbia
Cheers,
Andrey
17. Ian Dobson | October 12th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Very valid response and comments Rob. Love your presentation of the “Points of Pain”. Everybody selling media should clearly understand these and respect them.
Let’s not forget that digital signage is still in the non-traditional category in the media industry. Whatever is left after the traditional buys are made is all that’s available for not just digital networks but a slew of other mediums in the same category. In this case, it’s usually about your environment. Where you are and who you reach. If the client wants your environment, you have a chance. if they don’t, you’re out of luck.
Let’s not forget about another reason tv gets so much of the revenue for agencies. Production! Producing tv spots is very expensive…huge amounts of money that the agency collects a % on. They also get a % on every buy. This amounts to big revenues. The costs of producing radio spots, digital, print ads and others is minimal meaning less revenue for the agency. It’s simply the nature of the beast.
18. Nurlan | October 13th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Darin,
Here is the answer to your question from Jeff Dickey, Founder/VP Business Development, SeeSaw Networks:
“While standards have yet to be agreed upon, one emerging currency for digital signage buys is CPM, where the impressions are determined using the combination of a validated traffic number multiplied by an awareness
number. This formula truly brings an apples-to-apples comparison to digital out-of-home media buys that span multiple digital out of home networks.
National advertisers are reluctant to buy on flat rates simply because not all locations are equal, even within the same network (different demos, different traffic, etc.). Some networks have gotten away with requiring nationwide/network-wide buys, but those days are numbered as the advertisers push toward more specific buys with greater and greater levels of targeting.
If the research is available to support the demographics of female, Hispanic, or age groups — even better if the demographic data can be day-parted — a premium can definitely be applied to the better opportunities the advertiser has to reach their target audience.”
Jeff Dickey, Founder/VP Business Development, SeeSaw Networks
19. Minicom Blog | October 14th, 2007 at 4:39 am
Nice Blog
Welcome to the DS blogosphere.
20. Nurlan | October 15th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Rob Gorrie of ADCENTRICITY provided this answer to the above question by Darin Gilstrap by emai. I am posting it here on Rob’s behalf:
RG: Love this question – right in line with the type of mature answer
buyers need. Here’s the long answers:
Media formulae – there’s no one size fits all…and that’s part of the secret…our medium is NOT a commodity, nor is it a “rate cardâ€. A bunch of Omnicom clients (execs) I deal with relate this space to TV/Broadcast and feel it’s a trailer buy to a TV spend, which is measured against a quasi GRP. On the other hand, some of the guys I deal with in the WPP camp throw it in to outdoor, as a subset, which is measured on……..something (perceived passerby traffic)…
Others think it’s a subcomponent of online digital advertising, especially with the rise of online video.
One of my advisors probably had the best comment when he said: “your medium is everything BUT TV. It has the dynamic nature of the Internet, the recency/FMOT of point of purchase, the localism of newspaper, the frequency of outdoor, the POTENTIAL relevance of magazines, the qualitative measurement capability of none of them with none of the problems of TVâ€â€¦.FYI, he was one of the instrumental characters in launching a large number of specialty channels on TV. This, of course, brings us to our industry identity crisis problem..if we’re something of every medium, but none of them at the same time, what are we? (this is another discussion and part of why media buyers have such a hard time understanding what we are/can provide – and we don’t explain it well).
End of the day, everything in our space can be boiled back down to 2 baseline common denominators:
1.) CPM Audience (cost per thousand “impressions†on gross audience)
which is a 30+ year old metric. Regardless of how old or irrelevant
this number is, it’s STILL the baseline for COST comparison across media
- TV = $17-$27/CPM on survivor (40 million gross on monthly =
$500K+/spot). Magazine = $15 CPM on readership of 10 mil’ish. Digital
Signage = $5/CPM at C-Store….makes it easy to compare COST but not ROI
or performance or impact.
2.) CPM Ads Served (Cost per thousand ads served) – New School
Internet ratings. Works as an ROI comparative but means little on media
evaluation/effectiveness. Great for quantitative analysis on media
impact or “pseudo-efficiency†on spend. Using the above mentality; TV =
$500,000,000/thousand (1 ad = $500K), Magazine = $50,000,000/’000 (1 ad
= $50K). Digital Signage $50/’000 (1 ad = 0.05) – we’ve run campaigns
that serve 5 million ads in 4 weeks for very little…it gets a little
silly.
EVERY other metric can be boiled down to one of these two. What we should be striving for is a pseudo comparative metric close to GRP, which every other traditional, measured medium tries to emulate. This will take a couple of years and, quite frankly, can’t be accomplished by 1 network on its own or one category of network (e.g. just pharmacies) -
it’s completely dependant on the needs of the campaign.
Once you know this, you can reverse engineer everything else. We don’t really care what people need to evaluate on so we provide them everything….down to cost per ad served per gross audience reached. It’s a little overboard, but it means a buyer can evaluate a $ figure immediately based on what they need to evaluate it on to prove a good
buy to their client.
So what does that mean to your network, taking learning from above? As I’ve said before, Media buyers care about 3 things; Efficiency, Effectiveness and Reach. I won’t go into all of them but the big one is TARGETED reach.
So to the questions:
“Can you charge a national advertiser a flat ad-spot rate/per month/per
location?â€
Yes.
It boils down to CPM Viewers, whether you like it or not. Let’s take $200/venue/month/spot. And let’s pretend we’re talking about a Convenience store chain that sees 2000 ppl per day/venue on average. (60,000 gross audience per month/venue). If you’re charging the above $200/venue, you’ve effectively saying to the advertiser that your media is worth $3.33/’000. Now let’s say that you’ve got 500 Convenience stores on that average (30,000,000 gross audience). You’re still charging $3.33 at $200 a month per spot at 500 locations.
Realistically, 30,000,000 is worth a hell of a lot more than 60,000, especially if you want to start competing with the measured mediums, but Digital Signage isn’t mature enough as a holistic base to command that yet, nor do buyers trust it as a viable mass alternative or placeholder.
What’s more valuable?…a single, 1 day, $30,000 full page ad in the financial section of a newspaper that has a full paper “readership†of 1.2 million or a $60,000 Digital signage spend that serves 800,000 ads in 2 weeks in urban financial targets on various networks with a gross audience of 4,000,000 (targeted/net audience of 740,000)?
Give it 2 years and price inflation will occur naturally based on demand and finite inventory. Now, to top this off, you have to remember that the real value is in the actual TARGETED reach that an advertiser can get through the access achieved with your network. You should always really be selling on audience access as opposed to venues because that’s all a buyer really cares about…the more targeted your network is to their needs, the more likely they are to buy on it.
Where the REAL power comes in is with frequency. How many times can we make that audience on average see that ad without media fatigue? Does your audience come to your venue once a day or once a month? It’s a bit of a science and it gets really complex when you decide to merge 10 different categories together in one campaign (C-Stores, pharmacies, grocery, bar, etc).
Q: “As a network grows do advertisers hesitate to pay more based on network
growth?â€
No. actually, agencies and brands WANT more growth. 500 locations means nothing to them in the grand scheme of things. They can moan as much as they want (and trust me they will) but if you follow the above and your demo is what they want, you end up holding the cards. As above, if 30% of those 30 million gross audience are EXACTLY who they need to reach, you’re in the driver’s seat. Don’t fall for the “I reach X on TVâ€
argument either…realistically, if you know the stats, less than 46% of people even stay in the room (or change channel or start chatting or look at their laptop) during a TV commercial and of those 46%, the recall is 21% versus a 35%+ recall on Digital Signage.
In addition, TV’s “ad acceptance rating†is very low whereas I have studies that show acceptance on Digital Signage up to 60%. And of that TV audience, that’s GROSS…not really even targeted based on the GRPs they’re buying. End of the day, each brand only has so much dough, however….you need to make sure your content is relevant and up to date, otherwise the impact of your ads is zero because there’s nothing for the audience to look at or be entertained by.
Lastly, the media agencies aren’t buying because of scale. If they’re making 15% on this and you’re trying to sell them a 50K program, they make $7500 for a ton more effort than buying a newspaper spot (which is a phone call away). The media agencies want the networks to grow too to buy on 10,000 locations because it means the buy gets into the millions and they start making some real money based on their efforts. As hard as they push you down on price, the harder they push the less they make for their efforts (we sell on gross not net).
Q:â€What about niche audiences for example women-only, Hispanics, African American networks, do they garner higher rates based on tighter targetingâ€
RG: This is my favorite question. Yes and No is the best answer I can give, however. North American brands and media companies are disasters when it comes to targeting minorities or economic subsets. There’s been some great articles on ad age about this recently. They (we) aren’t very good at understanding how to effectively speak a different language other than “BRANDâ€. And a brand means something different to each targeted group. We’re learning, slowly, as the population changes and there are certain brands and agencies that have learned to capitalize on this trend.
Reality is, however, that you have to be smart about your sales efforts on this question. Despite the fact that they’ll deny it left, right and center, “Coke’s†media company will not see value in paying more for your “targeted†network of 500 locations versus someone else’s based on profiling of that nature. They’re VERY smart statisticians and very good at what they do, but it’s too small to be on their radar to have impact if they decide to target a particular group.
On the other hand, there are other brands who are second tier who LOVE the ability to get to this level, based on their product, service or campaign that no one pays attention to but are so perfect for Digital Signage (e.g. a inner city doctor’s network).
They also will realize more out of advertising with you than “Coke†will so…. Longer term, you can charge them more and, if you get enough of them, you get to turn down the “Coke’s†of the world on cheaper pricing, as attractive as they are, because your network is more effective for others and you don’t have to cater to their needs….the “A†list clients aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. The old saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder†still holds true. If you have a niche that is attractive to a particular advertiser, they’ll chase you if you can prove value and effective returns.
21. Nurlan | October 15th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
The following question was posted by Darin Gilstrap:
“BroadSign Bloggers: Since there are several media math formulas currently being used to calculate digital signage media buys, I truly wonder which formulas are really apples-to-apples. Can you charge a national advertiser a flat ad-spot rate/per month/per location across 500, 1000, 2000+ locations? As a network grows do advertisers hesitate to pay more based on network growth? What about niche audiences for example women-only, Hispanics, African American networks, do they garner higher rates based on tighter targeting.â€
Here is the expert answer from Jeff Dickey, Founder/VP Business Development, SeeSaw Networks (sent by email):
“While standards have yet to be agreed upon, one emerging currency for digital signage buys is CPM, where the impressions are determined using the combination of a validated traffic number multiplied by an awareness number. This formula truly brings an apples-to-apples comparison to digital out-of-home media buys that span multiple digital out of home networks.
National advertisers are reluctant to buy on flat rates simply because not all locations are equal, even within the same network (different demos, different traffic, etc.). Some networks have gotten away with requiring nationwide/network-wide buys, but those days are numbered as the advertisers push toward more specific buys with greater and greater levels of targeting.
If the research is available to support the demographics of female, Hispanic, or age groups — even better if the demographic data can be day-parted — a premium can definitely be applied to the better opportunities the advertiser has to reach their target audience.â€
Jeff Dickey, Founder/VP Business Development, SeeSaw Networks
22. A Digital Signage Trends &hellip | October 15th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
[...] continuation of the earlier discussion on how to sell your ad space, we received an answer to the following question posted by Darin Gilstrap: “BroadSign Bloggers: [...]
23. A Digital Signage Trends &hellip | October 15th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
[...] getting really solid expert feedback triggered by Darin Gilstrap’s questions posted last [...]
24. Selling Digital Signage A&hellip | October 16th, 2007 at 12:14 am
[...] original post and subsequent conversation is here: http://www.broadsign.com/digitalsignagedigest/index.php/2007/09/28/how-to-sell-your-digital-signage-…Â which really says most of it but it got fragmented across several posts so I listed them [...]
25. Bryan | October 16th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
This is an excellent point. CAP is definitely the direction that network operators need to be heading in as opposed to an “emergency push” approach. However, certain challenges remain before large scale implementation can begin.
1) Availability. As of this writing, there are remarkably few publically accessible CAP feeds. As time goes by, more and more governments and companies should gravitate towards the standard.
2) Scalability. By their very nature, emergency messaging systems are vulnerable to the Slashdot Effect because as soon as a message is posted, all recipients require it immediately. This can place a high load on the CAP server and stress its available burst bandwidth. Any reduction in QoS will introduce delays that diminish the value of the message. An alternative would be to push out the message via satellite multicast, however, usually multicast providers allow you only a certain window of time each day. If your emergency does not fall within your provider’s multicast window, it will be irrelevant by the time it is delivered.
3) Security. Network operators typically want emergency messages to preempt the regular schedule and/or preempt the entire display by going fullscreen. That requirement makes it a very dangerous feature because it introduces a means to easily hijack a digital sign. This is compounded by the fact that CAP is typically disseminated over regular HTTP which is vulnerable to all kinds of man-in-the-middle and DNS-based attacks. Using HTTPS and enforcing verification of the server’s certificate on the client side would go a long way to mitigate this risk, however, CAP providers really aren’t thinking about security yet, they seem to be more in the proof-of-concept phase.
26. Selling Digital Signage A&hellip | October 16th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
[...] It was followed up by a reader question, which Nurlan reposted here: http://www.broadsign.com/digitalsignagedigest/index.php/2007/10/10/question-from-a-reader-how-do-you... [...]
27. Top Internet Business&hellip | October 17th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
28. Tom Muniz | October 20th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Dan – spot on commentary!
The future of critical mass digital signage is intrinsically tied to advertising that is contextual and matched to the behavior of the consumer – and the kicker….accurately measurable to the connected consumer who is moving from platform to platform (TV to the PC..leaving the house with cell phone in hand and frequenting the 4th screen, digital signage OOH environments).
As an industry, we must set the standards – now – for Ad Serving and Ad Measurement with universal agreement to opening up all competing digital signage players and backends with the requisite SDKs/APIs and creating data compatible XML widgets to access the ad servers. If we don’t – Cisco, Google or Microsoft most certainly will.
29. phil G | October 22nd, 2007 at 2:33 pm
The title is missing for your RSS feeds (or un-readable for Google Reader). Harder to spot your feed in a RSS reader.
30. phil G | October 22nd, 2007 at 3:02 pm
What is WPP ?
31. Nurlan Urazbaev | October 22nd, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Phil,
As the company itself describes it: WPP is one of the world’s largest communications services groups, employing 100,000 people* working in over 2,000 offices in 106 countries.
A world leader in marketing communications.
WPP companies exist to help their clients compete successfully: in marketing strategy, advertising, every form of marketing communication and in monitoring progress.
You can learn more about WPP here: http://www.wpp.com/wpp/
32. Math Resources Blog &raqu&hellip | October 23rd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
[...] realageblog: [...]
33. Kike | October 25th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Can you monitor in real time your netwoked players?
34. darapido » Blog Arc&hellip | October 25th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
[...] more here This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 1:05 pm and is filed under advertising [...]
35. Daniel Parisien | October 26th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Hi Kike,
Monitoring is a vital component to running a digital signage network. When something happens on your network that can compromise your advertising revenue, you will want to react as quickly as possible to (1) identify exactly what is happening and (2) immediately respond to return to an operational state.
BroadSign Suite was specifically built with the monitoring and reporting tools you need to perform this. When an issue is reported, you can setup the system to immediately send you an email, for example.
I hope this helps,
36. TV » Digital Signag&hellip | October 26th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
[...] Jackson West wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptSome 63% of those who have seen digital signage say it attracted their attention, compared with 58% for billboards, 57% for magazines, 56% for TV, 47% for internet, 40% for newspaper, 37% for radio and 10% for mobile. … [...]
37. abplanet » Blog Arc&hellip | October 27th, 2007 at 3:19 am
[...] You can read more here [...]
38. www.educationadvice4u.inf&hellip | October 27th, 2007 at 6:01 am
[...] Nurlan Urazbaev added an interesting post today on Digital Signage Ads Are Tolerated better Than Other Media: OTX Study.Here’s a small reading:Most adults say advertising on digital signage catches their attention – and they consider such advertising unique and entertaining, and less annoying than both traditional and online media, according to a study by OTX (Online Testing … [...]
39. darapido » Blog Arc&hellip | October 27th, 2007 at 6:05 am
[...] more here This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 2:41 pm and is filed under media [...]
40. aislesx » Blog Arch&hellip | October 27th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
[...] more here [...]
41. OOHic » The Dirty L&hellip | October 29th, 2007 at 5:07 am
[...] Read the entire article. [...]
42. abplanet » Blog Arc&hellip | November 1st, 2007 at 10:10 pm
[...] full story here [...]
43. Ken Liao | November 2nd, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Daniel – great topic. We, at SeeSaw, whole-heartedly agree with the industry moving toward much greater accountability. It is refreshing to see your position that proof-of-play goes beyond logs of a playback device and needs to focus on playback at the screen level.
While we generally agree with your four components of an accountable digital signage reporting solution, we would respectfully add two additional factors: traffic and awareness. Traffic is represented the foot traffic passing by a specific location (the potential viewers) and awareness represents the percentage of people that are aware that a digital signage device is in place, displaying content. Everything in the system can operate perfectly, playback on the device is logged correctly, screens are on and displaying ads correctly – but without foot-traffic and awareness, there is no measurement of how many people actually SAW an ad.
By adding these two data components, the advertiser now has a more complete picture of their digital signage campaign’s performance. As Tom mentions, it’s imperative that standards be put forth by those looking to lead this industry.
44. Nurlan Urazbaev | November 2nd, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I think Ken brings up a highly valid point: in order to get reliable impressions numbers, you need to measure the audience and match that data with the proof of play (rather, proof of display, as per Daniel’s definition).
The problem is, in the real world, a lot of networks have neither accurate proof of display stats, nor regularly updated audience measurements. The audience surveys are very expensive and are usually done only once in a few months or once a year at best. So, the accountability becomes fuzzy.
This could be resolved first of all by improving the proof of display reporting process, and, secondly, by implementing digital monitoring of viewership.
Digital cameras that capture every instance of a customer looking at a sign, the duration of eye contact, often even the age, gender and ethnicity of a viewer are already available on the market. The monitoring is real- or near-real time, and various types of reports can be generated based on that data. This new technology allows to deliver the ad impressions numbers as “hard” data, as opposed to the “soft” data, when only a sample of audience is polled by way of traditional exit interviews and then the results are extrapolated to the whole “universe”.
Such proof of performance can be sufficient to analyze the effectiveness of media spending in a non-retail environment. In retail, however, the ultimate goal is sales lift (see the previous post on the topic), so the campaign performance picture would be completed if sales conversion data is added to the two previous tiers, i.e., proof of display and audience measurements.
Earlier this year I have proposed draft definitions of “the three tiers of accountability” for in-store digital signage:
Tier I:
Proof of ad delivery: How many times was my ad displayed on the targeted screens, in what markets, locations, sites, and over which period of time? Such analysis requires robust proof-of-play reporting mechanisms. This level of accountability is used to justify billing per campaign and reconcile invoices. It also facilitates pricing your airtime, if you want to base it on the cost per ad play.
Tier II:
Proof of audience delivery: While my ads were served, how many customers had the opportunity to see them, or actually saw them? The trick here is: you cannot prove audience delivery without having accurate proof of ad delivery first.
Tier III:
Sales uplift measurement. This is the crowning achievement of advertising effectiveness analysis that has become easily available only in Internet advertising (when it is combined with e-commerce) and properly set up in-store digital signage networks. It requires correlation between ad campaign data and POS data.
45. A Digital Signage Trends &hellip | November 2nd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
[...] Ken Liao from SeeSaw Networks sent this great response to Daniel Parisien’s post “The Dirty Little Secret of Digital Signage: Proof of Play vs. Audited Proof of Display“: [...]
46. daria | November 4th, 2007 at 6:35 am
If there was ever proof that digital signage works, here it is:
EyeClick is an innovative company that does amazing work in the field of interactive projected images. their line of products include various interactive surfaces such as: interactive walls,floors,windows and tables
they are cutting edge and creative, a company to keep an eye on!
http://www.eyeclick.com
47. Martin | November 12th, 2007 at 5:44 am
I want to contact your business development team person,
Thaks,
Martin
48. A Digital Signage Trends &hellip | November 12th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
[...] Related topics: Is Digital Signage for Branding or for Sales Lift? ; New Metrics for New Media? A Multi-Billion Dollar Question ; Digital Media M&As a “High Growth Category,†Despite the Credit Crunch and Fears of Recessio… [...]
49. Juri Hatzenbiller (KUDRYAVTSEV) | March 22nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Dear NURLAN !
Just a word of appreciation for your business and your company
I am writing in response to inform you that nowdays I live in
Germany, and my tel: 05761 – 7123.
Yours faithfully: Herr Juri Hatzenbiller
50. Manish Kapileshwar | March 25th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I have prepared a financial statement for Digital Signage Business Model where the customer generates extra revenue by selling slots to advertisers apart from internal Branding which i would first like to verify with you & than share with others.
51. Christien | April 1st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
What is the most effective method you’ve seen for DOOH?
52. Enrico | May 2nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I’ve just started working for a company that realize digital signage systems in Italy. I’m a project manager and soon I’ll have to manage the installation of hundreds of displays. In the meantime I’m trying to find the most valuable resources on the web to learn as much as I can, mostly to be able to address the most frequent problems before I step into them (as I surely will). This post, and this blog, looks really interesting and I’ve just bookmarked it to study it later. Thank you very much!
53. Jeff Geng | May 5th, 2008 at 3:13 am
When I read it the first time, it seemed to be a digital signage 101 and when I read the second time, it became a 201. Great source of information for planning, executing and operating!
54. Daniel Parisien | May 9th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Thanks everyone for your feedback.
Ed, we definitely are on the same page when it comes to monitoring display health. Our software has gone the extra mile and actually ties campaign performance reporting with display health where ad repetitions are not counted if the display is not proven to be healthy. It also (1) notifies the network operator so they can resolve the issue as quickly as possible and (2) runs some commands to try and fix the display if this is possible.
55. David Weinfeld | May 13th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Very interesting and insightful post. Social networking sites are still struggling to monetize their large subscriber numbers because every sites’ initial and primary goal was to gain subscribers. They figured that if you build it (large subscriber base) then the advertisers will come in truck loads. They need to ADAPT to the desires and behaviors of consumers. Facebook attempted to do this with their behavioral-targeting advertising platform with terrible results – subscribers rebelled against the open mining of their data.
Social networking sites, much like TV networks, need to involve consumers in the conversation and illustrate that they value consumers’ role in advertising.
Digital Out-of-Home is such an exciting and powerful medium becasue it exists to deliver the right message at the right time. Its flexibility and targeting power allows advertisers to craft unique messages for alternate demographic groups.
Advertising in today’s media environment of choice and consumer power works as long as you bring consumers into the conversation. Social networking sites must find a way to provide their subscribers discernable value in advertising to them.
56. Antoine de Ryckel | May 20th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Very good article, Dan.
Probably it would be a good idea to make a white paper out of it (sth like “best practices to deploy your digital signage network”).
Thanks, Antoine
57. L’affichage numé&hellip | September 28th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
[...] Nurlan de BroadSign a un article très intéressant sur la question ici. [...]